Rotten merry-go-round

Our policemen will hide the face of an accused rapist but will not hesitate to slap a protester. The cops never forget the relevant clause in the Criminal Procedure Code that demands the face of the accused be hidden till the test identification parade is held but throw all courtesy to the winds while dealing with agitated members of the public.

The disturbing police response to the five-year-old Delhi gang-rape victim’s family members and public agitators shows that little has changed for them after last December when a 23-year-old paramedical student, Nirbhaya, was brutally raped and left on the road to die. In the 13 days that she survived she jolted an entire nation out of its slumber, leading us to assume that much change would follow in the way the system responded to rape victims and their families. Even the father of the late Nirbhaya had hoped that no more daughters in society would face what his only daughter went through.

But recent incidents in Punjab, UP and now Delhi again, bring out the zero tolerance of police for protesters in general and women protesters and complainants in particular. These incidents were caught on camera and the body language of the cops makes it evident that these men have done it before off camera and will do it again.

At a time when our leaders are at least able to pretend to have learnt to take protests for what they are, police are unashamedly cross with people who want to be heard by the authorities.

Why do they keep on getting it wrong? Obviously their training is bereft of something crucial. Perhaps they are taught only to deal with criminals and not with angry citizens whereas their job covers both. Definitely a relook at the course content of police training is called for.

In the wake of the Nirbhaya tragedy, there was a sort of foot-in-mouth competition among leaders. On the day Abhijit Mukherjee, MP and the President’s son, made his infamous remark on the protesters being “dented and painted”, finance minister P. Chidambaram also said something that trivialized the Delhiites’ protest against rape. He alluded to the protesters as a “flash mob” while explaining how the Delhi police and the establishment were learning to handle such protests. A flash mob is a “gathering of strangers who perform a pointless act before dispersing” whereas the protesters were anything but that. People at large were charitable to the finance minister by not taking notice of what he had said.

Home minister Sushilkumar Shinde, who in December equated angry students with Maoists, did not disappoint citizens this time by saying that rape happens across the country. I am not sure about the point he was trying to make or how it was taking us forward in arresting the problem but he was echoing what Chief Justice of India Altamas Kabir said some time ago in reference to the Nirbhaya case, “What happened on December 16 in Delhi was sad and bad and something extraordinary, but at the same time not unique”! Dear Mr Shinde and Justice Kabir, that is the whole point, isn’t it?

Somehow, rapes are becoming common and run-of-the-mill occurrences and that is making us the people of India feel very insecure and frustrated.

Such observations by public figures point to the insensitivity of the establishment to the victims of an increasingly recurring crime and its ignorance of its role in redressing the serious problem. And a ‘progressive citizenry’ of this democracy was and is simply drawing the government’s attention to the extent to which it is falling short.

Four months ago, Delhi police commissioner Neeraj Kumar was very busy scoring brownie points with chief minister Sheila Dikshit when the gang-rape victim was lying in hospital battling for her life. The girl, as a patient in the ICU, was made to give her statement to the police a second time for reasons that appeared more political than technical. This time around, Neeraj Kumar is convinced once again that his resignation will not solve any problem.

He is absolutely right. A replacement for him is going to come from the same society that always locks the stable after the horse is stolen. The criteria for becoming a decision-maker are determined by people already in power, many of whom came through the back door and do not know what the front door looks like. The public perception is that appointments to many top jobs that have a direct bearing on public safety and welfare are made based on parameters other than merit. Usually the person who gets the job emulates his predecessor in being fixated on his chair and in being creatively inactive. How can such a person be expected to be accountable? Of course, he will not understand why people holding public office in the West quit their jobs to take moral responsibility for something that goes wrong.

The entire culture of corruption that engulfs the country – from the crores of rupees in the case of 2G, CWG, Coalgate, military helicopters and so on to the 50 or 100 bucks in the case of traffic cops – makes us a people so used to manipulation of the law. It is futile to continue to curse the trees nurtured by us. New seeds and new soil are needed for new trees to grow.

At a certain level, the violence that accompanies the gang rape of the Nirbhayas and the Gudiyas is symbolical of what we as a society have done to ourselves. The rot set in long ago and we are just caught in a merry-go-round.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Author

Ramesh is a journalist working with The Times of India’s Delhi edition. He's worked for several years in English-language newspapers in Bahrain, Dubai and Muscat before returning to India in September 2010. During his stay in the Gulf he has written on Sri Lanka affairs, Middle East politics, the nuclear issue and the environment.

Ramesh is a journalist working with The Times of India’s Delhi edition. He's worked for several years in English-language newspapers in Bahrain, Dubai and. . .

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Ramesh is a journalist working with The Times of India’s Delhi edition. He's worked for several years in English-language newspapers in Bahrain, Dubai and Muscat before returning to India in September 2010. During his stay in the Gulf he has written on Sri Lanka affairs, Middle East politics, the nuclear issue and the environment.

Ramesh is a journalist working with The Times of India’s Delhi edition. He's worked for several years in English-language newspapers in Bahrain, Dubai and. . .